A Mission of Advancing the Well-Being of the Holistic Family in Society
When Dr. Vimala Pillari joined Clark Atlanta University in October 2008 as dean of Whitney M. Young Jr. School of Social Work, she had a vision to launch a center that would conduct and promote research and training for the benefit of families, children and community organizations, while building the reputation of the programs.
In previous positions, Pillari had been founding dean and director of the Graduate School of Social Work at Dominican University and Newman University. She is the author of numerous books, including Scapegoating in Families, Shadows of Pains, and Human Behavior in the Social Environment (coauthored with Moses Newsome Jr.). Drawing on a strong background as a licensed clinical social worker, caseworker, author, and from having had her own private practice, Pillari envisioned establishing a research center deeply embedded in social work with a mission of benefiting families and children.
Thus, the Families and Children’s Research Center at CAU was recently established with two research concentrations to be conducted by faculty and students: families and children, and health and mental health. There are also plans for the Center to provide some degree of training for the people of local communities.
“I think it is really important to have a research center of this type in the hubbub of Atlanta, and I think it makes perfect sense for such a center to be housed at the Whitney M. Young Jr. School of Social Work,” said Pillari. “We are quite excited about this new center because it is a place where we can cater to all research needs in reference to children, in reference to families and in reference to situations like marital problems, adolescence issues, divorce, young male fathers raising children, and the absence of male figures in families of young women.”
The Families and Children’s Research Center will examine many ethnic and racial groups. However, in keeping with the Whitney M. Young Jr. School of Social Work’s 89-year history of specializing in social issues among African Americans, the research work will pay special attention to African-American families.
The Center has three primary objectives and the study of family units is vital to each objective. The three research objectives are intergenerational patterns of physical and emotional abuse-prevention, early and later grandparenting issues and solutions, and single parent families/understanding single mother and single father lifestyle issues and solutions, particularly given that the numbers of single mothers and single fathers are increasing.
According to Pillari, who has studied and written extensively on the three focal points of the Center, quite often children learn from their parents, grandparents and caretakers. For example, when children see or experience physical abuse, domestic violence, drug addiction, alcohol dependency or mistreatment of family members by other family members, those learned behaviors are repeated, thus creating an intergenerational pattern of abusive behavior.
“I have seen the results of intergenerational patterns of disease, social problems and abuses; I have seen babies burned by cigarette butts,” said Pillari. “I have seen some horrible abuse due to these patterns. I say, let’s study that and find ways to address these problems, and help the families.”
The Families and Children’s Research Center was developed to address different types of families that now exist in communities, such as nuclear, extended, heterosexual and homosexual couples living together with children, large extended families and single parent families where the composition of the family changes constantly. There can be a direct impact on these families and their children due to the lack of availability of neighborhood and community support systems.
One of the Center’s central purposes is to also serve as an in-house training ground for graduate students and those who are already working in the profession. It will conduct and promote research and training, while increasing the levels of excellence for the School of Social Work’s graduate programs.
One critical area that Pillari is also focusing on is identifying and securing a major sponsor and other funding as both are vital to carrying out the Center’s mission. She is also pursuing collaborations with other universities as a means of securing funding and growing the Center beyond its initial work.
“The research that we do here will be based on the entire Atlanta community,” said Pillari. “We want to be known not just here in Atlanta but in Georgia and, hopefully, the rest of the country as well in the next four to five years.”